Professional Editing Designed For Self-Publishing Writers

Detailed copy editing that will lift your book to a publishable standard…

What you get…

• Editing specifically designed for self-publishing.
• Comprehensive in-depth line edit of your complete book.
• Reader’s report highlighting areas that need attention.
• Precise guidance and examples of how to correct any problems, leaving you in control.
• Instruction on how to avoid making future grammar, punctuation and structural mistakes.
• A specifically selected professional, qualified and experienced editor.
• Honest advice on how to achieve your publishing goals.
• $10 per 1000 words.
• In short, all you need to prepare your book for printing.

What other writers have said about BubbleCow…

Caroline Smailes has the patience of a saint on Christmas Day. I expected an editor to be a being from another world. All shouting, all gnashing of teeth when I’d made a mistake. No! not Caroline. No matter how many mistakes I’ve made she is only too pleased to correct them. Caroline has encouraged me in every line and file that I have ever sent her. When there is something wrong, she tells me. When something is good, she tells me. She’s a lot like Annie Oakley at a shooting contest…she never misses a thing. Anyone who is completed a story should look no further than Caroline to edit it for them. She very approachable too, not the fuddy-duddy I expected. My god, she even knows a little bit about football. What else is there to say!

John Gillum

BubbleCow know the fast-changing literary landscape inside out. The experience and contacts they have will improve any writer’s chances of either a first publication or improved sales and readership.

Chris Rickaby

If you want uninterrupted praise for your work, ask your mum. If you want praise where it’s due and honesty were it isn’t (and this is exactly what people trying to improve should want), you need the services of a good professional editor and I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending team Bubblecow for the job. Not only will they tell you what you need to hear instead of what you want to hear, they will do it quickly and that is precious in the modern literary world.

Matthew Watkinson author of On the Destiny of Species

What it will cost…

BubbleCow is an Internet based company and our low overheads mean that we can pass on the benefits to our writers. We charge just $10 per 1000 words for everything listed above. That’s $10/1000 words for the detailed line edit, the reader’s report and our advice.

Example prices:

• 10,000 words = $100.
• 50,000 words = $500.
• 100,000 words = $1000.
• 150,000 words = $1500.

What the line edit will include…

BubbleCow’s editing service has been designed to provide a ‘publisher’ style edit, which leaves your manuscript as close to ‘print ready’ as possible. This means that our edit will leave you confident that your manuscript is ready to move to the next stage.

If your book was being prepared for publication by a publishing house, it would pass through a three editing step process - Structural editing, Stylistic editing and Copy editing.

Our service combines the three types of edit (Structural, Stylistic and Copy) to provide you with a ‘publisher’ standard line edit. The edit involves one of our professional and experienced editors reading through your work, line by line, and asking themselves the following questions:

• Is the book’s organisation and content suitable for the intended audience, medium, market, and purpose? [Structural]
• How can the book’s meaning be clarified, the flow improved and the language smoothed?[Stylistic]
• Have you ensured the correctness, consistency, accuracy, and completeness of the document? [Copy]

If you wish to see the guidelines we use when editing then this document will help you to understand the internal process in more detail. We have built our editing process around the professionally recognised editing standards and processes used by all major publishing companies worldwide (example here).

What your feedback will look like…

Your final report will be made up of two parts.

The first is a Reader’s Report. This includes our editor’s thoughts on your manuscript, ideas about improving your work and any general structural points you should consider. This feedback also includes any points that we feel need particular attention.

The second part is the in-depth line edit. This is embedded in your original document and can be viewed by opening the document with any good word processing package. Our comments will appear on the right hand side of the text. The editor will have read through your work and on a line-by-line basis, and added comments and pointers that will improve your text. Though this is not a proofread, any grammar or spelling mistakes we spot will be highlighted. The report is designed to allow you to produce a new and better re-write by systematically working through the comments and implementing as you see fit.

Please note we don’t use tracked changes, instead we use the simple comments feature. The reason for this is that much of the editing process requires the editor to make a judgement call. Our editors will suggest the corrections and changes their experience and training tells them will work best in the context of your book. However, you may wish to overrule their judgement. Tracked changes make this difficult.

It is our belief that the report is as much a teaching aid as it is an assessment of your book. We design our feedback to highlight areas in which you can strengthen your writing. We also structure our comments in such a way that you will be shown how to apply the techniques we are suggesting to improve your book.

Writer's manuscript with BubbleCow editor's comments embedded

Editor's comments

Download the sample to read in more detail.

More about our editors…

BubbleCow is a family run business and employs two full time editors with a third due to start shortly. Our lead fiction editor is Caroline Smailes. She is a novelist in her own right with a number of novels published by HarperCollins. She is also a highly experienced editor with an English degree and a master’s degree in Creative Writing. Our lead non-fiction editor (and experienced fiction editor) is Gary Smailes. He is also a writer with more than twenty children’s books already in print. Gary has a master’s degree in Military History.

How it all works…

1. You complete the form above,

2. We assign a suitable editor,

3. An email invoice is sent to the email you provide and payment is made via our secure PayPal server,

4. Our editor completes your edit within 21 working days of payment,

5. You receive an email with the reader’s report and line-by-line edit,

6. We have a discussion about the next step.

The small print (but in large print)…

At BubbleCow we understand that each writer’s book is different, and therefore we have a minimum word count of just 5000 words.

We aim to return the completed edit within 21 working days, if not sooner. Upon payment you will be sent an email with the latest date on which the edit will be returned. However, as a rough rule of thumb you should allow a full calendar month for one of our editors to assess your work.

ALL work is treated with 100% confidentiality. This is an unbreakable rule. All manuscripts are deleted from our servers one months after the completed edit has been returned.